Lamar Breaking News, Sports, Weather, Traffic

Fire department moves forward

Burkhart takes over for Chief Cook

Deputy Chief Marcus Widener led the students on a practice run through the burn facility before setting it on fire during the Citizen's Academy May 21. (Chris Frost / Lamar Ledger)

There have been many changes at the Lamar Fire Department in 2015, with the most notable one being Chief Jeremy Burkhart taking over for Marshall Cook who left Lamar, Feb. 6.

"We've been taking in the reigns for about a year now," he said.

Burkhart praised the staff, and said they stepped up to help with his transition.

"For a lot of the year we were two people down," he said. "It's not a surprise when you look at what they do overall, but at the same time, I am appreciative of what they do to help out."

The most rewarding part of the job, he said, is watching his firefighters become involved in the community, whether it is shoveling walks, delivering Toys for Tots or fire prevention programs throughout the year.

Citizens academy members had the opportunity to experience a real fire a the burn building exercise May 21.

"They are taking some of their ideas and putting them on the pavement seeing how they work and watching it succeed," he said.

Among the ideas the department has moved forward with are changing schedules, he said, apparatus locations, and things they might have had on their minds and didn't think about bringing them forward.

"One thing the guys wanted to do was wear shorts," he said. "You look at Phoenix Fire and they are hotter than the gates of Haiti's down there, but we get just as hot so we looked and saw what their policy was and now the guys can wear shorts from Memorial Day until Labor Day."

That helps the firemen last longer in the heat, he said, and means fewer breaks.

Burn Facility and ISO evaluation

Advertisement

The training resource is 90 percent complete because the department has been short staffed.

"It's to the point where we can do life-fire training," he said. "Holly has come over, Las Animas has come over, and of course Prowers County trains with us as well."

Burkhart added that participation from outside agencies has doubled.

The company experienced a big win with its Insurance Service Office (ISO) evaluation, which is something he would have rather put off for a bit while he got the feel for the department.

"The ISO evaluator made the process very easy," he said. "Usually you hear war stories about the ISO evaluations and real horrible stuff."

The inspector, he said, was a pleasure to work with and the rating went down, which is considered an epic success.

"These guys put forth a lot of work to get that accomplished," he said.

The change came from small incremental successes, he said, like the members of department doing more training.

"Our response time has never been large, but we've been able to get more people on the scene at once," he said. "We got a new ambulance in and started a fire 1 program on Jan 4, which gets done sooner and is more beneficial for the students because it's not drawn out over an extended period of time."

The program will run for approximately 9 weeks.

"A couple of weeks after that, we are going to start hazmat operations," he said. "In order to become a fire 1 in the state of Colorado, you also have to have hazmat ops, so by the time we get to mid-May the guys will be testing for their fire 1."

Members can also further their education and take a fire 2 class.

"If they get one year of firefighting experience, they can go ahead and take the fire chief class and test," he said. "The fire 2 classes are only about three weeks, two or three nights a week, instead of that full initial fire 1 class."

From there, the volunteers can move forward and get a fire instructor certificate.

"It's moving us forward as a fire department," he said. "Also, Holly is going to be sending some guys, along with Las Animas and Prowers County Rural, so it's not just Lamar moving forward, it's our emergency response community in the valley."

The effort, he said, is contributing to a coalition that makes the entire valley safer.

The number of hours training will benefit ISO ratings in the future.

"Fire 1 is something I would like to look at every year in the beginning of the year," he said.

Burkhart said there has to be balance in training.

"There always has to be classroom training," he said. "At the same time, firefighters are very physical learners and they are hands-on."

That means utilizing the burn facility or training on how to use the ladders and firefighter safety, he said, and training how to get people out of emergency situations.

"To me, we've opened up a little more of the hands-on training and actually practiced it," he said.

Burkhart said whenever the department has an acquired structure in town; they need to bring it up to code to train at the location.

"That's why the burn facility is so nice because we don't have to go in and repair the thing before we use it," he said. "For the structures in town, we use them for pump training because they (firefighters) are outside on the trucks and handling the hoses because we still have to cool surrounding areas."

Those opportunities, he said, are good practical training opportunities.

He called all those improvements part of a great year for the department.

"Plus we had an increase in calls and had all those calls covered," he said.

The accident

The department responded to a "disastrous wreck down south" he said, and the Lamar Fire Department threw all of its efforts into the situation.

"All of Prowers County did," he said. "We had Holly, Prowers Rural, and a large response from our emergency services community to get that taken care of. When the incident was taken care of with the least amount of life lost, that's a huge success there. Everybody knocked out a bad situation."

He said the response in that situation falls under the incident command system.

"All the other departments train, but we do have some local planning committee meetings just to have an idea of whose resources are where," he said. "Whenever it comes down to the call dropping, everybody knows how to follow the incident command system."

The system places one or two guys in charge to get the task accomplished, he said, and everyone falls into their position "from there on out."

"That's where it really pays off when large incidents happen," he said.

Grants

The department will be submitting a new grant application for gear in January that was not successful in 2015.

"We reevaluated and we'll be writing for new radios that we didn't get in 2015," he said.

New truck

The new aerial truck will be a substantial purchase, he said, and the department will seek grant money for that equipment.

"John Sutherland is helping me with that, so we are trying finding a truck and get a solid amount of money before we apply for that," he said.

There is a height issue with most new trucks, he said, as most are 11 feet 6 inches and taller, while the city doors are 11 feet, 3 inches and the length of the bay is too short.

"Our truck is 38 feet long and if we do some jockeying we could possibly go to 44 feet," he said.

That, he said, would be a stretch and a last option for a new truck.

"There's a couple of vendors helping me look for a truck," he said. "We found some older trucks that would fit, but when you buy an older truck you're buying someone else's problems."

The current aerial was older and bought in 1999, he said, and since it was a 1976 Mac, it was something to fill in for a short time.

"The city is to a point where it's ready to make a significant investment that will last for quite a few years to come," he said.

The city is also looking at demo trucks and one he looked at was a 2010 model with all the warranties.

"It's nice," he said. "It's a little out of our price range, but it will fit in our bay. We're looking for more grant money."

The city has $350,000 in the capital outlay budget to use for match money.

He called Sutherland a valuable resource.

"That guy, if I have something I have a question about, it doesn't matter if he is busy or not, he'll make the time to squeeze me in and get the questions answered," he said. "That's everything from grants, personnel and public issues. What he has done for me is amazing."

Staffing

All engineer positions were filled in 2015, he said, but they ran in 2015 without a captain do to funding issues.

The captain position just closed and three applied for the job.

"This is an internal application," he said. "Once we staff that out of the engineers, we'll move forward and open the engineer position."

The goal, he said, is to be fully staffed within the next 45 days.

Openings are limited by the number of available radios.

"The auxiliary has openings, so if you want to see what it's about a little bit you can come on," he said. "We're trying to start a civilian volunteer program, if you don't want to the firefighting or see the blood, but you still want to be at the fire station."

Civilian member Kenny Apodaca said a prime example of a civilian member and Burkhart says he helps with organizing things, moving equipment and help around the station.

The department has three volunteers leaving for college in May so there will probably be openings.

"Especially if we get our radio grant," he said.

The culture

Burkhart became disheartened in 2014, he said, because there was a fireman in the ranks and he didn't know his family after a year.

"To me didn't have the community you would think would be there," he said. "This year we are trying to make a point of getting together every other month for dinner."

They also had a July 4, barbecue and a pool party in 2015 that involved the families.

"We're already asking for a lot of their time, but I want their spouses and kids to know who their time is being shared with," he said. "At the same time, I want the spouses and kids to make a connection on their own, so they get a sense of community. That has helped everyone move forward."

The Auxiliary

He called the group amazing.

"Whether it's a member that's sick and getting flowers or meals, if they need meals," he said. "If members have children and need to be helped out, you always know they are a phone call away. By getting a group together, we can help to raise money to get something accomplished or by helping with a bake sale."

Call data

"From November 2014 until November 2015, the department had 1,199 ambulance calls and 248 fire calls.

"That's an increase over last year of 231 ambulance calls and 40 fire calls," he said. "When we are talking about average calls per day; that's like shoving two more months of ambulance calls into the year and two more months of fire calls into the year for us."

The numbers gave Burkhart goose bumps about how much his department has stepped forward.

"We were real hot in August and September and kind of slowed down in November and December," he said. "It's crazy how much we've run on short staff."

The department is also moving forward with reporting software that was updated in 2015. The last update was in 2005.

"We can do fire reporting, fire inspections, ambulance reporting, billing and its real comprehensive software," he said. "This will take care of inventory, fire inspections, how we take care of our ambulance and our main goal is to go paperless in the next month."

Article Comments

We reserve the right to remove any comment that violates our ground rules, is spammy, NSFW, defamatory, rude, reckless to the community, etc.

We expect everyone to be respectful of other commenters. It's fine to have differences of opinion, but there's no need to act like a jerk.

Use your own words (don't copy and paste from elsewhere), be honest and don't pretend to be someone (or something) you're not.

Our commenting section is self-policing, so if you see a comment that violates our ground rules, flag it (mouse over to the far right of the commenter's name until you see the flag symbol and click that), then we'll review it.